From LOJBAN%CUVMB.BITNET@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU Wed Nov 29 15:32:05 1995 Received: from VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (vms.dc.lsoft.com [205.186.43.2]) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) with ESMTP id PAA12803 for ; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 15:32:03 -0500 Message-Id: <199511292032.PAA12803@locke.ccil.org> Received: from PEACH.EASE.LSOFT.COM (205.186.43.4) by VMS.DC.LSOFT.COM (LSMTP for OpenVMS v1.0a) with SMTP id E524C81B ; Wed, 29 Nov 1995 15:07:42 -0500 Date: Wed, 29 Nov 1995 19:56:54 +0000 Reply-To: ucleaar Sender: Lojban list From: ucleaar Subject: Re: misc responses to And #2 X-To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu To: John Cowan Status: OR > >> I again cite center embedding as a well-known example both of the limits > >> of recursion and of formal grammatical structures. > >That's no good. I've already told you that's a special case. Plus, > >centre embedding does not result in nonsense, though it does result > >in unacceptability. > As far as I am concerned,as a native English speaker, a 10-level center > embeddding is just as much nonsense as, for example, taking a perfectly > grammatical sentence and writing the words in reverse order. Your being a native english speaker does not give your views on this matter weight. The answer to whether it is or isn't nonsense is a theoretical, possibly definitional, one; obviously the answer I consider correct is the one I've already given, for reasons I've already given. > One happens to be permitted by Chomskyan recursive transformations, > and the other is not, but neither is acceptable, grammtical or whatever. Everyone agrees they're unacceptable. As I've already said, whether it's grammatical is a theoretical matter; your views count only if you're being a theoretician. I myself consider it grammatical, and that remains the prevailing view. --- And